Most of this is copy/pasted from Insert Credit and rllmuk, but people over here should be far more interested in this stuff. And from the look of the other thread you've all got PC-compatible PS3/360 sticks so you can't even use the excuse that keyboard controls are terrible 
Comiket 73 is starting! For those who don't know, Comiket is a huge exposition in Japan (over half a million people attended the most recent one!) where people release independent comics, music and games. Pretty much all non-freeware independent games in Japan are originally released at a Comiket exhibition, so all the doujin games that were finished since August are being released right now. The games usually only cost around £5-£7 each, and you can buy the best ones from Palet Mail or Himeya a few weeks after the expo.
http://www.paletweb.com/
http://www.himeyashop.com/
There's absolutely no barrier of entry for people wanting to run a stall at Comiket so there are obviously quite a few terrible games released, and there are plenty of visual novels and adventure games and so on that are useless if you can't speak Japanese, but there's also a bunch of games that look far better than 99% of the stuff you get on XBLA or PSN. Like these:
- Platine Dispositif (creator of Gundeadligne, Dicing Knight etc) is releasing Space Dynagon, which looks like Kiki Kaikai or Commando or whatever. It's probably going to be brilliant like every other game he's ever made but the demo crashes on startup for me 
http://www6.cds.ne.jp/~murasame/games/dynagon.htm
- Twilight Frontier are releasing aTouhou RTS/tower defense game! Watch the video (the section starting at 2:04 is beautiful)! Look at the screenshots to see how nice 1024x768 2D is!
http://tasofro.net/patchcon/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vTkVzPg4yU
http://tasofro.net/patchcon/img/psc01.jpg
- Tennen-Sozai are releasing eXceed2nd-VAMPIRE REX-, which is a shmup that shares Ikaruga's color-changing mechanic but seems to put the emphasis on surviving ridiculous bullet patterns rather than continuous chaining. I always liked the original eXceed2nd, and the two demo videos look fun too.
http://www.tennen-sozai.com/eXceed2nd-rex/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKCo5PJzF1A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_4ooEhyou8
- Ether Vapor by Edelweiss is finally being released, and there's a nice preview video on youtube. The production values are excellent and as much as I love danmaku shooters, it'll be nice to play something that looks a lot easier for a change.
http://edelweiss.skr.jp/works/ethervapor/index.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C46Og2JJAg8
- [erka:es] are releasing the finished version of RosenkreuzStilette, and if the downloadable demo is anything to go by it's like MegaMari but not as good. But nothing's as good as MegaMari, and the demo was worth a playthrough or two.
http://kurotama.sakura.ne.jp/product/rks/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8lCpHpLB_4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzkZXOAKITw <- that's MegaMari, it's pretty much the best game ever
Cool thanks for posting this. I'm a sucker for these things and dabble every once in a while. I never knew about Comiket. Another reason why Japan rocks hard.
Cheers for making this thread Mr Peckerston. It's very informative about a subject I'm not too versed in, but I would like to give things like this a go.
MegaMari looks absolutely wonderful!
Thanks
I've played a few of the games for a couple of hours; PatchCon (the Touhou tower defense game) seems like it'll be a fun timewaster and Ether Vapor is a bit dull so far, but I haven't made it to any of the good parts I saw in its trailer yet and I can't figure out its scoring system.
But Flying Red Wine Barrel ~A Diary of Little Aviator~ is amazing! It's by a group called Orange Juice, who made QP Shooting and the Suguri series:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLkH1yC9NxQ - Acceleration of Suguri (it's a bit like Senko no Ronde and it has online multiplayer)
http://www.stage6.com/user/ubuojiad/video/1646974/Suguri-Replay-Stage-7 - Suguri
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp7Mzh_I9sA - QP Shooting
Little Aviator is a fun vertical shooter with a nice simple scoring system, and its pre-rendered cel-shaded ships are really cute. Especially the "flying red wine barrel" itself:
See?
Here's a replay of stage 2 on easy mode, which does a good job of showing off the game's system. This was my second credit ever and I hadn't seen most of stage 2 before, so don't expect me to score loads of points
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~ctm06/aviator_easy2_410646.avi
Your main shot just goes straight forward and does a small amount of damage, so you have to rely on your missiles. You can store up to 5 missiles at a time (you can see how many you have in the bottom-left of the screen), and you refill your stock of them by collecting the coins that drop from defeated enemies. Killing enemies with missiles is also the only way to increase your chain/multiplier (shown in the top left corner) so to keep your chain going you have to constantly collect coins or you'll run out of missiles (see 1:14 of the video
)
There are also "Bonus Chance" sections (see 1:39 of the video) where you get bonus points if you kill the next wave of enemies without being hit, letting the bonus timer run out or letting any of the enemies escape (like the plane that flies off the bottom of the screen at 2:42
)
I just played it again and I discovered that you can fire super missiles by holding the missile button instead of tapping it, and they use 2 of your missile stock but are more powerful than standard missiles and have a larger explosion radius. Also, missile explosions cause enemy bullets to turn into "mini coins" that can give you points. Oops!
Hi,
If anyone manages to get Space Dynagon to work please let me know how!
I experience the same problem as Mr Peckerston. The game just closes when you run it. All I get is a black screen which immediately closes.
I've tried running this game via AppLocale but that hasn't helped either.